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Introducing a Special Section

We all have our issues. Sure, most of us spend a bit too much and save too little, no matter how old we are. We live for today without thinking enough about tomorrow. But many of the thorniest money issues are age-specific, whether it’s paying for a college education or figuring out what kind of allowance to give ourselves during the first years of retirement. If we could tackle these things when they first present themselves, they wouldn’t become problems that last for decades.

So in Money Through the Ages, a special section, we present 10 stories of individuals and families trying to conquer the challenges that their financial lives present. Mino Caulton, 18, must decide in the next few weeks whether a private college is worth the debt he would incur to attend. For two families in their 30s, the challenges are similar, but because one household is headed by a gay couple, financial affairs are much more complicated. One retiree is worried about running out of money, while another worries about what to do with the money he will almost certainly have left over.

You can hear some of their stories this weekend on Marketplace Money, the public radio show. The show’s host, Tess Vigeland, wrote two articles in this package.

We’ve also included audio clips in an interactive timeline at nytimes.com/yourmoney. Use the timeline to create your own to-do list of tasks to complete as you reach various points in your financial life. Within the timeline, you’ll find links to dozens of Marketplace spots and New York Times articles and blog posts that can help.

To help the people we write about here, we paired them up with financial advisers and others who are about their age and have faced similar issues, from paying for college without the help of a parent to the setbacks that come from a job loss.

Make no mistake, though. What you have here is a collection of articles about how things are — not how they should be. Advisers can help, but only so much.

We think you’ll find glimpses of yourself or your parents or your children throughout the section. And if the profiles inspire questions or strong feelings, we hope you’ll share them with us in the next week on our Bucks blog at nytimes.com/bucks.